The Man With Two Left Feet

by P. G. Wodehouse

  The consequence was that the difference between us and most popular restaurants was that we kept our popularity. We fed them well, and we served them well; and once the thing had started rolling it didn’t stop. Soho isn’t so very far away from the centre of things, when you come to look at it, and they didn’t mind the extra step, seeing that there was something good at the end of it. So we got our popularity, and we kept our popularity; and we’ve got it to this day. That’s how MacFarland’s came to be what it is, mister.

  With the air of one who has told a well-rounded tale, Henry ceased, and observed that it was wonderful the way Mr. Woodward, of Chelsea, preserved his skill in spite of his advanced years.

  I stared at him.

  ‘But, heavens, man!’ I cried, ‘you surely don’t think you’ve finished? What about Katie and Andy? What happened to them? Did they ever come together again?’

  ‘Oh, ah,’ said Henry, ‘I was forgetting!’

  And he resumed.

  As time went on, I begin to get pretty fed up with young Andy. He was making a fortune as fast as any feller could out of the sudden boom in the supper-custom, and he knowing perfectly well that if it hadn’t of been for Katie there wouldn’t of been any supper-custom at all; and you’d of thought that anyone claiming to be a human being would have had the gratitood to forgive and forget and go over and say a civil word to Katie when she come in. But no, he just hung round looking black at all of them; and one night he goes and fairly does it.

  The place was full that night, and Katie was there, and the piano going, and everybody enjoying themselves, when the young feller at the piano struck up the tune what Katie danced to in the show. Catchy tune it was. ‘Lum-tum-tum, tiddle-iddle-um.’ Something like that it went. Well, the young feller struck up with it, and everybody begin clapping and hammering on the tables and hollering to Katie to get up and dance; which she done, in an open space in the middle, and she hadn’t hardly started when along come young Andy.

  He goes up to her, all jaw, and I seen something that wanted dusting on the table next to ’em, so I went up and began dusting it, so by good luck I happened to hear the whole thing.

  He says to her, very quiet, ‘You can’t do that here. What do you think this place is?’

  And she says to him, ‘Oh, Andy!’

  ‘I’m very much obliged to you,’ he says, ‘for all the trouble you seem to be taking, but it isn’t necessary. MacFarland’s got on very well before your well-meant efforts to turn it into a bear-garden.’

  And him coining the money from the supper-custom! Sometimes I think gratitood’s a thing of the past and this world not fit for a self-respecting rattlesnake to live in.

  ‘Andy!’ she says.

  ‘That’s all. We needn’t argue about it. If you want to come here and have supper, I can’t stop you. But I’m not going to have the place turned into a nightclub.’

  I don’t know when I’ve heard anything like it. If it hadn’t of been that I hadn’t of got the nerve, I’d have give him a look.

  Katie didn’t say another word, but just went back to her table.

  But the episode, as they say, wasn’t conclooded. As soon as the party she was with seen that she was through dancing, they begin to kick up a row; and one young nut with about an inch and a quarter of forehead and the same amount of chin kicked it up especial.

  ‘No, I say! I say, you know!’ he hollered. ‘That’s too bad, you know. Encore! Don’t stop. Encore!’

  Andy goes up to him.

  ‘I must ask you, please, not to make so much noise,’ he says, quite respectful. ‘You are disturbing people.’

  ‘Disturbing be damned! Why shouldn’t she—’

  ‘One moment. You can make all the noise you please out in the street, but as long as you stay in here you’ll be quiet. Do you understand?’

  Up jumps the nut. He’d had quite enough to drink. I know, because I’d been serving him.

  ‘Who the devil are you?’ he says.

  ‘Sit down,’ says Andy.

  And the young feller took a smack at him. And the next moment Andy had him by the collar and was chucking him out in a way that would have done credit to a real professional down Whitechapel way. He dumped him on the pavement as neat as you please.

  That broke up the party.

  You can never tell with restaurants. What kills one makes another. I’ve no doubt that if we had chucked out a good customer from the Guelph that would have been the end of the place. But it only seemed to do MacFarland’s good. I guess it gave just that touch to the place which made the nuts think that this was real Bohemia. Come to think of it, it does give a kind of charm to a place, if you feel that at any moment the feller at the next table to you may be gathered up by the slack of his trousers and slung into the street.

  Anyhow, that’s the way our supper-custom seemed to look at it; and after that you had to book a table in advance if you wanted to eat with us. They fairly flocked to the place.

  But Katie didn’t. She didn’t flock. She stayed away. And no wonder, after Andy behaving so bad. I’d of spoke to him about it, only he wasn’t the kind of feller you do speak to about things.

  One day I says to him to cheer him up, ‘What price this restaurant now, Mr. Andy?’

  ‘Curse the restaurant,’ he says.

  And him with all that supper-custom! It’s a rum world!

  Mister, have you ever had a real shock—something that came out of nowhere and just knocked you flat? I have, and I’m going to tell you about it.

  When a man gets to be my age, and has a job of work which keeps him busy till it’s time for him to go to bed, he gets into the habit of not doing much worrying about anything that ain’t shoved right under his nose. That’s why, about now, Katie had kind of slipped my mind. It wasn’t that I wasn’t fond of the kid, but I’d got so much to think about, what with having four young fellers under me and things being in such a rush at the restaurant that, if I thought of her at all, I just took it for granted that she was getting along all right, and didn’t bother. To be sure we hadn’t seen nothing of her at MacFarland’s since the night when Andy bounced her pal with the small size in foreheads, but that didn’t worry me. If I’d been her, I’d have stopped away the same as she done, seeing that young Andy still had his hump. I took it for granted, as I’m telling you, that she was all right, and that the reason we didn’t see nothing of her was that she was taking her patronage elsewhere.

  And then, one evening, which happened to be my evening off, I got a letter, and for ten minutes after I read it I was knocked flat.

  You get to believe in fate when you get to be my age, and fate certainly had taken a hand in this game. If it hadn’t of been my evening off, don’t you see, I wouldn’t have got home till one o’clock or past that in the morning, being on duty. Whereas, seeing it was my evening off, I was back at half past eight.

  I was living at the same boarding house in Bloomsbury what I’d lived at for the past ten years, and when I got there I find her letter shoved half under my door.

  I can tell you every word of it. This is how it went:

  Darling Uncle Bill,

  Don’t be too sorry when you read this. It is nobody’s fault, but I am just tired of everything, and I want to end it all. You have been such a dear to me always that I want you to be good to me now. I should not like Andy to know the truth, so I want you to make it seem as if it had happened naturally. You will do this for me, won’t you? It will be quite easy. By the time you get this, it will be one, and it will all be over, and you can just come up and open the window and let the gas out and then everyone will think I just died naturally. It will be quite easy. I am leaving the door unlocked so that you can get in. I am in the room just above yours. I took it yesterday, so as to be near you. Goodbye, Uncle Bill. You will do it for me, won’t you? I don’t want Andy to know what it really was.

 
Katie

  That was it, mister, and I tell you it floored me. And then it come to me, kind of as a new idea, that I’d best do something pretty soon, and up the stairs I went quick.

  There she was, on the bed, with her eyes closed, and the gas just beginning to get bad.

  As I come in, she jumped up, and stood staring at me. I went to the tap, and turned the flow off, and then I gives her a look.

  ‘Now then,’ I says.

  ‘How did you get here?’

  ‘Never mind how I got here. What have you got to say for yourself?’

  She just began to cry, same as she used to when she was a kid and someone had hurt her.

  ‘Here,’ I says, ‘let’s get along out of here, and go where there’s some air to breathe. Don’t you take on so. You come along out and tell me all about it.’

  She started to walk to where I was, and suddenly I seen she was limping. So I gave her a hand down to my room, and set her on a chair.

  ‘Now then,’ I says again.

  ‘Don’t be angry with me, Uncle Bill,’ she says.

  And she looks at me so pitiful that I goes up to her and puts my arm round her and pats her on the back.

  ‘Don’t you worry, dearie,’ I says, ‘nobody ain’t going to be angry with you. But, for goodness’ sake,’ I says, ‘tell a man why in the name of goodness you ever took and acted so foolish.’

  ‘I wanted to end it all.’

  ‘But why?’

  She burst out a-crying again, like a kid.

  ‘Didn’t you read about it in the paper, Uncle Bill?’

  ‘Read about what in the paper?’

  ‘My accident. I broke my ankle at rehearsal ever so long ago, practising my new dance. The doctors say it will never be right again. I shall never be able to dance any more. I shall always limp. I shan’t even be able to walk properly. And when I thought of that . . . and Andy . . . and everything . . . I. . . .’

  I got on to my feet.

  ‘Well, well, well,’ I says. ‘Well, well, well! I don’t know as I blame you. But don’t you do it. It’s a mug’s game. Look here, if I leave you alone for half an hour, you won’t go trying it on again? Promise.’

  ‘Very well, Uncle Bill. Where are you going?’

  ‘Oh, just out. I’ll be back soon. You sit there and rest yourself.’

  It didn’t take me ten minutes to get to the restaurant in a cab. I found Andy in the back room.

  ‘What’s the matter, Henry?’ he says.

  ‘Take a look at this,’ I says.

  There’s always this risk, mister, in being the Andy type of feller what must have his own way and goes straight ahead and has it; and that is that when trouble does come to him, it comes with a rush. It sometimes seems to me that in this life we’ve all got to have trouble sooner or later, and some of us gets it bit by bit, spread out thin, so to speak, and a few of us gets it in a lump—biff! And that was what happened to Andy, and what I knew was going to happen when I showed him that letter. I nearly says to him, ‘Brace up, young feller, because this is where you get it.’

  I don’t often go to the theatre, but when I do I like one of those plays with some ginger in them which the papers generally cuss. The papers say that real human beings don’t carry on in that way. Take it from me, mister, they do. I seen a feller on the stage read a letter once which didn’t just suit him; and he gasped and rolled his eyes and tried to say something and couldn’t, and had to get a hold on a chair to keep him from falling. There was a piece in the paper saying that this was all wrong, and that he wouldn’t of done them things in real life. Believe me, the paper was wrong. There wasn’t a thing that feller did that Andy didn’t do when he read that letter.

  ‘God!’ he says. ‘Is she . . . She isn’t. . . . Were you in time?’ he says.

  And he looks at me, and I seen that he had got it in the neck, right enough.

  ‘If you mean is she dead,’ I says, ‘no, she ain’t dead.’

  ‘Thank God!’

  ‘Not yet,’ I says.

  And the next moment we was out of that room and in the cab and moving quick.

  He was never much of a talker, wasn’t Andy, and he didn’t chat in that cab. He didn’t say a word till we was going up the stairs.

  ‘Where?’ he says.

  ‘Here,’ I says.

  And I opens the door.

  Katie was standing looking out of the window. She turned as the door opened, and then she saw Andy. Her lips parted, as if she was going to say something, but she didn’t say nothing. And Andy, he didn’t say nothing, neither. He just looked, and she just looked.

  And then he sort of stumbles across the room, and goes down on his knees, and gets his arms around her.

  ‘Oh, my kid’ he says.

  And I seen I wasn’t wanted, so I shut the door, and I hopped it. I went and saw the last half of a music hall. But, I don’t know, it didn’t kind of have no fascination for me. You’ve got to give your mind to it to appreciate good music hall turns.

  One Touch of Nature

  The feelings of Mr. J. Wilmot Birdsey, as he stood wedged in the crowd that moved inch by inch towards the gates of the Chelsea Football Ground, rather resembled those of a starving man who has just been given a meal but realizes that he is not likely to get another for many days. He was full and happy. He bubbled over with the joy of living and a warm affection for his fellow-man. At the back of his mind there lurked the black shadow of future privations, but for the moment he did not allow it to disturb him. On this maddest, merriest day of all the glad New Year he was content to revel in the present and allow the future to take care of itself.

  Mr. Birdsey had been doing something which he had not done since he left New York five years ago. He had been watching a game of baseball.

  New York lost a great baseball fan when Hugo Percy de Wynter Framlinghame, sixth Earl of Carricksteed, married Mae Elinor, only daughter of Mr. and Mrs. J. Wilmot Birdsey of East Seventy-Third Street; for scarcely had that internationally important event taken place when Mrs. Birdsey, announcing that for the future the home would be in England as near as possible to dear Mae and dear Hugo, scooped J. Wilmot out of his comfortable morris chair as if he had been a clam, corked him up in a swift taxicab, and decanted him into a Deck B stateroom on the Olympic. And there he was, an exile.

  Mr. Birdsey submitted to the worst bit of kidnapping since the days of the old press gang with that delightful amiability which made him so popular among his fellows and such a cypher in his home. At an early date in his married life his position had been clearly defined beyond possibility of mistake. It was his business to make money, and, when called upon, to jump through hoops and sham dead at the bidding of his wife and daughter Mae. These duties he had been performing conscientiously for a matter of twenty years.

  It was only occasionally that his humble role jarred upon him, for he loved his wife and idolized his daughter. The international alliance had been one of these occasions. He had no objection to Hugo Percy, sixth Earl of Carricksteed. The crushing blow had been the sentence of exile. He loved baseball with a love passing the love of women, and the prospect of never seeing a game again in his life appalled him.

  And then, one morning, like a voice from another world, had come the news that the White Sox and the Giants were to give an exhibition in London at the Chelsea Football Ground. He had counted the days like a child before Christmas.

  There had been obstacles to overcome before he could attend the game, but he had overcome them, and had been seated in the front row when the two teams lined up before King George.

  And now he was moving slowly from the ground with the rest of the spectators. Fate had been very good to him. It had given him a great game, even unto two homeruns. But its crowning benevolence had been to allot the seats on either side of him to two men of his own mettle, two godlike bein
gs who knew every move on the board, and howled like wolves when they did not see eye to eye with the umpire. Long before the ninth innings he was feeling towards them the affection of a shipwrecked mariner who meets a couple of boyhood’s chums on a desert island.

  As he shouldered his way towards the gate he was aware of these two men, one on either side of him. He looked at them fondly, trying to make up his mind which of them he liked best. It was sad to think that they must soon go out of his life again for ever.

  He came to a sudden resolution. He would postpone the parting. He would ask them to dinner. Over the best that the Savoy Hotel could provide they would fight the afternoon’s battle over again. He did not know who they were or anything about them, but what did that matter? They were brother-fans. That was enough for him.

  The man on his right was young, clean-shaven, and of a somewhat vulturine cast of countenance. His face was cold and impassive now, almost forbiddingly so; but only half an hour before it had been a battlefield of conflicting emotions, and his hat still showed the dent where he had banged it against the edge of his seat on the occasion of Mr. Daly’s homerun. A worthy guest!

  The man on Mr. Birdsey’s left belonged to another species of fan. Though there had been times during the game when he had howled, for the most part he had watched in silence so hungrily tense that a less experienced observer than Mr. Birdsey might have attributed his immobility to boredom. But one glance at his set jaw and gleaming eyes told him that here also was a man and a brother.